


At 4am

by DollyPop



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Het Relationship, Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, F/M, Literal Sleeping Together, Sleepy Cuddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 07:14:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6945070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DollyPop/pseuds/DollyPop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The truth is that this is all she needs: no fancy declarations or flowers or chocolate. Just him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At 4am

Sometimes, Marie wonders if Kami and Naigus think that, when Marie is alone, that she doubt Stein. That she lays on the bed, wondering if the relationship they had was something he wanted, or something he had simply fallen into. And the fact that her friends believe she’d doubt him sinks and stings her, especially when she remembers them as she is lying in bed and he is not there, holed up in his lab that he promised her he’d leave after just “15 more minutes” approximately an hour ago.

Truthfully, it isn’t as though she minds: she’s long since grown accustomed to him. Knew “15 more minutes” was “maybe I won’t sleep tonight” or that he’d maybe slide in later, when she’s asleep, to warm his chest against her back. She understands that it is not malice, on his part. He is simply curious and it is his job to research and he likes to research, besides.

In a lot of ways, she realizes that she’s grown to lean upon him. Her meister. Her partner. Her husband. (Well, almost-husband.) The man she loved once in her girlhood and again as a grown woman. What are the odds, she thinks. Azusa teased her that of course the Pulverizer would leave nothing unfinished, not even her teenage romance that she believed to be one sided.

Too many people thought it was _still_ one sided. Bitterly, Marie recalls that, to most of her friends, Franken, Stein was incapable of loving anything. Not her. Not the baby they made together that she was carrying. Not anything he couldn’t carve open and slick his fingers with blood.

She knows they’re wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. She knows in the deepest part of her that the man she loves also loves her, that this is mutual. Why else would he curl up to her, open his soul to her, this man who was once so hidden away he wouldn’t allow anyone close?

In the darkness, she rolls over with a frustrated sigh, unused to resting without his hands around her, and she stares at _her_ hands in the gloom. The wedding ring, or, rather, engagement ring, catches what miniscule light there is and it gleams. It was enough proof for her, that he would marry her, sleep beside her, be inside her heart and her soul and in her. Wasn’t that what love was? Why didn’t anyone else understand? What did she need fancy declarations for, anyway? How could anyone doubt them when he opened his home to her and made grotesque pranks involving hearts in jars as though to tell her that he would give her his, has given her his, metaphorically and, in a way, literally?

What man who could not love _does_ that?

And even still, when it passes midnight and she cannot rest and her mind is running a mile a minute, as she whips herself into a frenzy of irritation at her friends, as she remembers Kami and Naigus’ concerns, that he was, is, only pretending, playing a role, working definitions out for himself, she cannot help but wish that people understood. That she and their baby, their family, their marriage was all the proof they should damn well need. 

And Marie stares at the ceiling and thinks and thinks and wants him to come to bed so he can tell her that she needs to relax, and she will melt against him.

* * *

The truth is that Marie knows she’s being silly by being angry, and that her friends are being silly, and that everyone who doubts him does not know him. Because it doesn’t matter who believes he can love and who doesn’t, so long as she does.

Because it has always been that way, she and he being the center, everyone else inconsequential. It was like this since they were children and Kami would get into fights with him because he was spending time with her and they would still hang out afterward. It was like that since the night in the graveyard, when Naigus warned her that Stein could not love, and then Marie found herself cradled with the gentlest, sweetest touch in his arms under the moonlight.

Somewhere in her, she doesn’t blame them for not understanding. Stein had always been private, and he didn’t announce what a hopeless sap he could be, the silly man. Hell, he barely forgave himself for his soft smiles at her in public, at how his voice would soften when he spoke to her and only her. Relationships were dangerous, had always been dangerous in their world. If people knew she was his Achilles Heel, certainly they would target her like the bullies at school targeted her when they were but children and word got around that precious Marie Mjolnir had a crush on the class weirdo.

He knows she can handle it. She knows he knows. She knows he’s aware that she can crush anything in her path to dust. But it is because he loves her that he wants to spare her the frustration, the agony of hurting other things.

He knows she hates being the Pulverizer. So she’s allowed to be Sunshine around him, instead.

It isn't 'I love you' but it's damn close.

* * *

There are never dramatics, with them. She should know that, by now.

It must be somewhere past 4 am in the morning after she has drifted into tentative slumber that she feels him slide into bed and his bare chest presses against her back and she wakes without fail. Because she is a Death Scythe first and foremost and she has been trained into a soldier’s sleep, where everything is a potential death and she must hide her belly from the beasts of the world. Not here, however. Not from him.

She wakes and she is instantly calm, at peace, feeling as though she has found comfort once more and no one would ever believe that she knows, instinctively, that it is Stein, but she does. She hears him murmur as his arm wraps around her waist, his fingers drumming over her hip before he slides the tips beneath her sleep shirt to warm against her skin and she has to jolt at the iciness of them.

“Mmsorry,” he grumbles out, curling around her, her backside pressing against his hips, and she fits against him like a puzzle piece, as though she were created to be near him.

“You’re freezing,” she informs him, but she’s just glad he’s come to bed, her heart hummed in her chest in the familiar way that indicates that she’s happy.

This? This is organic, an action all his own, one he does not for the sake of any experiment but for his own comfort, to be near her, to wrap himself around her, to press a soft, chapped kiss to her cheek.

“I’m cold,” he replies, pressing the flat of his palm against her belly, and she can feel their resonance spark through them.

The truth is that this is all she needs, the feeling of his soul coming over her own as she dislodges his hold and senses the small welling of early panic waver in his wavelength (oh, he should know by know that she wouldn't leave) before she squirms her way around to face him.

He looks so damn tired, her enigma of a fiancé. His own fault for staying up all too late. But Marie’s lips tip up, anyway, especially when she feels a shiver of pleasure run through his soul at seeing her. His huge, calloused hand comes to the back of her head, fingers tangling in her hair and she leans into his grasp, feeling him rub his thumb behind her ear.

She thinks she must look something like a cat with how smug her smile turns, a silent triumph, when she opens her eye and curls her lips just so.

“I can warm you up, then?” and his breath hitches because she sets her hand against his chest and feels his heart pumping. She swings her leg over his hips, coming in closer so she can see how his pupils have dilated.

Wrapped around his soul or inside of it, there is nowhere and nothing for him to hide, and he does not shield himself from her prying, either. Marie tucks her face close to his neck and nuzzles and kisses his pulse point and feels the fluttering of his heartbeat on her lips.

And when he brings his hand to her lower back and she feels his soul swell, he says “Marie,” but it sounds like something else; like “stay?”, like “please?”, like “I love you so fucking much”. There are words in his throat he cannot force out and she doesn’t want him to, either.

She doesn’t need the fancy declarations. She does not need the doubt and the worries and the ‘concerns’ of her friends who do not believe in him. The matter is that _she_ does, always has, and she loves him loves him loves him. The matter is that this is all she needs.

In the cradle of night, when dawn is coming in only a few more hours, they curl around each other until she and he is we, is ‘us’, and he says her name like prayer.


End file.
